The Gryphon's Skull

12

Walking into the andron of the family house, Menedemos felt himself shrinking from a man to a youth, perhaps to a little boy. When he sailed the Aegean, he dealt with prominent merchants—some of them older and richer than his father—as equal to equal. They saw him as he was today. In Philodemos' eyes, he fell back into the past. He knew he always would, as long as his father lived.

“Not as good a run as you had last year,” Philodemos said.

“We made a solid profit, sir,” Menedemos said. “And we took fewer risks than we did last year.”

When he'd come home the previous fall, Philodemos had done nothing but complain about the chances he'd taken in Great Hellas. Now his father said, “Well, those risks paid off. Here, you might as well have stayed in Rhodes and done your trading at the harbor, the way Himilkon the Phoenician does.”

That wasn't fair. Even so, Menedemos didn't argue. In his father's eyes, he was almost certain to be wrong. Instead, he changed the subject: “I'll want to talk with Himilkon before we go out again next spring. Sostratos thought we might sail east to Phoenicia and get rid of one set of middlemen on goods from that part of the world.”

“Your cousin has good sense,” Philodemos said. That was true. Had he left it there, Menedemos wouldn't have minded. But he added, “Why don't you ever have good ideas like that?”

Menedemos could have claimed going east as his own notion; it had been as much his as Sostratos'. Had he done so, though, he knew his father would have found some reason not to like it. I can't win, he thought. But arguing with his father wouldn't get him anything, either. He gave up, saying, “It's good to see you well.”

“I could be better,” Philodemos said. “My joints pain me, as those of a man with my years will. Old age is a bitter business, no doubt about it.” After a sip of wine, though, he admitted, “It could be worse, too, I will say. My teeth are still mostly sound, and I thank the gods for that. I wouldn't want to have to live out my days on mush.”

“I don't blame you,” Menedemos said.

His father said, “You did well with those emeralds. How much were you getting for those last few?” When Menedemos told him, he whistled. “That's good. That's very good.”

“Thank you.” Are you well? Menedemos wondered. Are you sure you won't hurt yourself, saying I did something right?

“I feel I ought to pay my fair share of what you made for them, not what they cost you,” Philodemos said.

Oh, so that's it, Menedemos thought. Say what you will about him—and I can say plenty—my father's as stubbornly honest as Sostratos. Aloud, he said, “You can do that if you feel you must, sir, but if anyone's entitled to buy at wholesale, not retail, it's the founder of the firm.”

That won him a smile—no mean feat, seeing how spikily he and his father got along. Philodemos said, “You may be right. I'll talk with my brother and see what he thinks.”

“All right,” Menedemos said. That was where things would matter, sure enough. As far as this line of the family was concerned, it was just a matter of two accounts for the same silver. But, to Uncle Lysistratos, it would be a question of whether the money belonged in the firm's account or out of it. Menedemos went on, “I still think he'd do the same thing.”

“He might well,” his father replied. “But if he did, he would ask me, and so I'll ask him.”

“How does your wife like the stone?” The question put Menedemos on dangerous ground: not so dangerous as it might be, for his father had no inkling of what he felt for Baukis, but dangerous even so. He knew as much, and asked anyhow.

Philodemos smiled again, this time not at Menedemos but at the world at large. His lean, rather pinched features softened. For a moment, he seemed a different man, and one much easier to like. He said, “Timakrates the jeweler mounted it in a splendid ring, and she was glad to get it.”

How glad was she? How did she show it? Menedemos could picture the answers to those questions readily enough. He shook his head, trying to get the pictures out of his mind. To keep his father from thinking he was unhappy—and to keep him from jumping to more unfortunate, and more accurate, conclusions—he said, “I hope she gives you a son.”

“Seeing as another son would make your portion less, that's a generous thing for you to say.” Philodemos didn't sound suspicious, but did sound surprised. “Maybe you're growing up after all.”

“Maybe I am.” Menedemos was convinced he'd grown up some years before. He was also convinced his father would never believe it. He asked, “How are things between her and Sikon?” That was a safer question.

His father snorted. “You know cooks. He's convinced he rules the roost. If you try to tell him anything else, he starts screaming that nobody will be able to eat his food any more, and that we'll never manage another proper dinner party again. He spends money as though he stamped it himself.”

“He doesn't steal much,” Menedemos said. “Everything he makes is good. If we can afford good opson, why shouldn't we enjoy it?”

On the instant, Philodemos' features returned to the hard cast Menedemos knew so well. “Yes, if. If, on the other hand, mullet and squid and dogfish bankrupt us, then we should keep a closer eye on what he spends. You may not care about such things—”

“Who says I don't?” Menedemos broke in.

His father ignored him. “—but Baukis believes in watching where the drakhmai go. We still eat well, but we'll have some silver left for you to squander when you do come into your inheritance.”

“That's not fair. I'm making us money,” Menedemos said.

“Less than last year,” Philodemos said again.

Menedemos made as if to tear his hair. “Last year you called me an idiot for taking some of the chances I took. I took fewer chances this year, and we made less money. Now you complain about that! How can I please you?” It's simple, he thought. / can't.

“Lower your voice. Do you want the slaves hearing all our business?” Philodemos said.

“No.” All Menedemos wanted was to get away. That was generally true whenever he talked with his father. It had been true before Philodemos wed Baukis, and was doubly true these days. Now he wanted—he needed—to escape Rhodes altogether, not just the andron or the house. And he would be stuck here till spring. With a growl that might have come from the throat of a cornered wolf, he got to his feet. “If you'll excuse me, Father...”

He went into the kitchen, where Sikon was expertly shucking boiled prawns out of their shells. The cook was chewing as he worked, which meant he'd sampled a few, or maybe more than a few. Philodemos fed his slaves well; he wouldn't mind that. And who'd ever heard of a scrawny cook, or at least of a scrawny cook worth having?

But when the door opened, Sikon looked up in alarm. When he saw Menedemos coming in, he relaxed. “Gods be praised, it's just you, sir. I was afraid it might be the lady.” He rolled his eyes and let his head twist bonelessly in a gesture he must have filched from the comic stage.

“She'll learn,” Menedemos said uncomfortably. He didn't like to hear anyone criticize Baukis. That had little to do with her position as manager of the household, much more with the position he would have liked her to . .. Stop that! he shouted at himself, as he did several times a day.

Sikon, of course, had no idea what he was thinking. Had the cook known, he wouldn't have dared roll his eyes again and say, “Maybe she will, but when? And will she drive me daft before she does? She fusses over every obolos I spend.”

“You've got to make her happy,” Menedemos said, and sternly told himself not to pursue that line of thought, either.

“Make her happy?” Sikon howled, peeling another prawn. “How am I supposed to manage that, short of serving nothing but barley porridge for the next six months? I think her mother must have been frightened by a tunny while she was in the womb.”

Menedemos pointed to the prawn shells and the tiny bits of flesh clinging to them. “Instead of throwing those in the street in front of the house, why don't you give them to her to bury in the garden? They'll make her flowers and herbs grow better, and she's bound to like that.”

“Is she? If you want to know what I think, I think she's more likely to grill me about how much the polluted prawns cost,” the cook said. As Menedemos did when his temper began to rise, he drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. Sikon recognized the danger sign. “All right, all right. I'll give them to her, and I hope it does some good, that's all I've got to say.”

It wasn't all he had to say, nor anywhere close to it. And he said still more when Menedemos reached out and hooked a fat prawn from the bowl into which he'd been tossing them. Mouth full, Menedemos retreated.

A moment later, he wished he hadn't: Baukis had come down from the women's quarters and was picking up a hydria so she could water the garden. “Hail,” she called to him.

“Hail,” he answered. His gaze flicked to the andron. Sure enough, his father still sat inside. He would have to be all the more careful about what he said, then.

But before he had a chance to say anything, Sikon stormed out of the kitchen, both hands full of prawn shells. He all but threw them at Baukis' feet. “Here you are, my lady,” he said. “They'll make good manure for the plants, I hope.”

She looked startled; plainly, Sikon had never done anything like that before. “Thank you,” she said. “You're right. They will.” But then she asked, “How much did you pay for the prawns?”

The cook glared at Menedemos. I told you so, his eyes said. Then, reluctantly, he turned back to Baukis. “I got a good price for them.”

“I'm sure they'll be very tasty,” Menedemos said. “In fact, I know they'll be very tasty, because I tasted one.” Since he'd suggested this course to Sikon, he had to back him now.

Baukis said, “Tasty is one thing. Expensive is something else. What exactly did you pay for the prawns, Sikon?” Having no choice, the cook told her. She fixed him with a stony glance. “What would you call a bad price, if that's a good one?”

Defiantly, Sikon answered, “I've paid plenty more in years gone by. And”—he folded his arms across his chest—”nobody complained, either.”

The Macedonians and Persians lined up against each other at Gaugamela could not have glowered with greater ferocity. Menedemos, in the middle, feared he might be torn limb from limb. “Peace, both of you,” he said. “That isn't a dreadful price.” He found himself wishing his father would come out of the andron and help him. If that wasn't a measure of his alarm and desperation, he couldn't imagine what would be.

Philodemos stayed where he was. He had too much sense, or too little courage, to jump into the middle of this battle. Under Menedemos' protection, Sikon preened and swaggered. Baukis looked as if he'd stabbed her in the back. “If you care more about your belly than about what this house really needs ...” She didn't finish the sentence, but turned on her heel and stalked toward the stairs leading up to the women's quarters.

Menedemos watched—he couldn't help watching—the furious roll of her hips. Beside him, Sikon cackled with glee. “Thank you kindly, sir,” the cook said. “I guess you told her.”

“I guess I did,” Menedemos said dully. He scowled at Sikon. Could those prawns possibly be good enough to make up for getting Baukis angry at him? He doubted ambrosia from Olympos would be good enough for that.

“—And I looked under the rower's bench,” Sostratos said, “and the sack with the gryphon's skull in it was gone. One of those polluted pirates had stolen it. What I'd do to that son of a whore if I could ...”

“I'm sorry,” Erinna said, and then, with something like awe, “I've never seen you so angry before.”

Sostratos looked down at his hands. Of themselves, they'd folded into fists. When he willed them open, the marks of his nails were printed on his palms. More than a little sheepishly, he smiled at his younger sister. “If you think I'm angry now, you should have seen me when it happened. So much knowledge that might have been so important, gone forever ... I was beside myself.”

A fly landed on Erinna's arm. She brushed at it, and it darted away. Gyges, the majordomo here, had heard from Philodemos' cook next door that Baukis was using fish offal to fertilize her garden. Erinna had started doing the same thing. Maybe the plants appreciated it. Sostratos was certain the flies did. The one that had been on Erinna's arm landed on his leg. He smashed it. It fell in the dirt. A tiny gecko darted out from between two stones, seized it, and disappeared again. Sostratos wiped his hand on his chiton.

His sister sighed. “Being a man, being able to do all those things, go all those places, must be wonderful.”

“Not always,” Sostratos said dryly. “I could have done without pirates trying to kill me or sell me into slavery.”

Erinna flushed. “Well, yes. But most of the time . . . You know what I mean. You usually know what I mean.”

Sostratos coughed. “Thank you.” That was a rare compliment. He couldn't imagine anyone else saying such a thing to him. Menedemos? No, not likely. And he couldn't imagine saying such a thing to anybody else himself, not even to Erinna.

She asked him a question that surprised him: “You know Damonax son of Polydoros, don't you?”

“Of course I do,” Sostratos answered. “I took the gryphon's skull to show him this past spring, remember? He tried to buy it from me. Now I wish I'd let him do it.” He frowned. “Why do you want to know? “

“You were at the gymnasion yesterday when he stopped by,” Erinna said. “He might be interested enough in marrying into the family not to care so much about how old I am.”

“You're not old,” Sostratos said loyally. “You're only nineteen.”

“That's old for a girl to be marrying,” Erinna said.

He couldn't very well argue with her, because she was right. She'd been only fourteen when she wed for the first time. But he said, “Isn't Damonax already married?”

“He was.” Erinna's face clouded. “His wife died in childbirth not long after you set out for Kos. He's looking to marry again. Of course, from what Father said, he wants a bigger dowry because I'm older.”

“He would,” Sostratos said. But that wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

“What's he like?” Erinna asked. “I got a glimpse of him as he was leaving, and he's more than good-looking enough, but that only goes so far. What's he like?”

Sostratos had never thought he might be describing Damonax as a possible husband. Would I want him for a brother-in-law? he wondered. He wasn't sure. He said, “He's bright enough—he studied in Athens before I did, you know. I don't think he's as bright as he thinks he is, but how many people are? He's not stingy, not from anything I've ever seen. I've never heard anything bad about him.”

He hadn't heard that much praise for Damonax, either. He went on, “When he wants something, he really wants it—I have noticed that about him. But that's not necessarily good or bad.”

“Would you want him in the family?” Erinna asked.

That was the very question Sostratos was asking himself. Since he had no good answer for it, he gave back a question of his own: “What does Father think?”

“He didn't send Damonax away with a flea in his ear,” his sister said. “He's—thinking things over, I guess you'd say.”

“Good. These dickers can take a long time,” Sostratos said. “The one for your first marriage did. I probably remember that better than you do—you were still a girl then.”

“I didn't have much to do with it,” Erinna agreed. “But it's different now. I'm not a girl any more. And I don't want this dicker to take a long time, because I'm not getting any younger.”

“Time is a terrible enemy. Sooner or later, it always wins.”

Erinna sprang to her feet and hurried upstairs to the women's quarters. Sostratos stared after her. Oh, dear, he thought. That wasn't what she hoped I'd say at all. Then he realized something else: no matter what Father thinks, she wants to marry Damonax. He must feel like a second chance for her.

Do I want Damonax in the family? If I don't, have I got any good reason for not wanting him? And why does he want to join us? We're tradesfolk, and he's got land. Is he in debt?

Those were all good questions. He had answers for none of them. He couldn't ask his father; Lysistratos was down at the harbor. From what Erinna said, his father was at least thinking about the match. That was interesting. Erinna, no doubt, found it much more than interesting.

A bumblebee buzzed through the garden. Sostratos went into the andron. He'd been stung before, and didn't care to get stung again. After a while, the bee had drunk its fill and went away. Sostratos returned to the courtyard.

Threissa, the family's redheaded Thracian slave girl, came out with her arms full of freshly washed tunics and mantles. She started spreading them in the sun to dry. “Hail,” Sostratos said.

“Hail, young master,” she answered in her oddly accented Greek. Carrying a load of wet clothes had got the front of her own tunic wet, too, so that it clung to her breasts. Sostratos eyed her. She noticed him doing it, and spoke quickly: “You excuse me, please, young master? I terrible busy.”

He took her up to his bedroom every so often. She was only a slave girl; how could she say no? Even asking him to wait would have landed her in trouble in some households. But taking her for his own pleasure while she was in the middle of work would have landed him in trouble with his mother and sister. And, since she was more resigned to their occasional couplings than eager for them, he was less eager for them himself than he might have been. And so he said, “All right, Threissa,” though he didn't leave off eyeing the way the wet wool displayed her nipples.

“I thank you, young master,” she said. “You a kind man.” Despite such praise, she stood with her back to him as much as she could.

Terrible to be a slave, Sostratos thought. Terrible to be a woman and not a man. And if you're unlucky enough to be both, what can you do? Turn your back and hope, no more. Gods be praised I'm a free man.

He might have gone upstairs with her when she finished spreading out the clothes, but his father got back while she was busy there. Lysistratos looked pleased with himself, saying, “I may have a deal for some olive oil of the very first pressing. That won't be long now; the fruit's getting on toward being ripe.”

“That's good, Father,” Sostratos said, “but what's this I hear about Damonax son of Polydoros sniffing around after Erinna?”

“Well, I don't quite know what it is,” Lysistratos answered. “It's all very tentative right now. But she should be married again if we can arrange it—you know that. And I wouldn't mind a connection to Damonax's family—I wouldn't mind that at all.”

“I understand—they've owned land for generations,” Sostratos said. “Why do they want anything to do with us, though? Have they fallen on hard times?”

“That occurred to me, too, but not that I know of,” his father said. “I am sniffing around—I'm sniffing around like a scavenger dog sniffing for garbage, as a matter of fact. Haven't found anything out of the ordinary yet.”

“There must be something. Otherwise, he wouldn't be willing to join with mere tradesmen.” Sostratos smiled a sour smile. People whose wealth lay in land always looked down their noses at those who made money by their wits. Land was safe, stable, secure—boring, too, Sostratos thought.

“Actually, son, you had something to do with it,” Lysistratos said.

“Me?” Sostratos' voice was a startled squeak. “What? How?”

“Seems you impressed Damonax no end when you wouldn't sell him the gryphon's skull this spring,” Lysistratos told him.

“I wish I had. Then it would still be here.”

“That's as may be,” his father said. “But Damonax thought all merchants were whores, and they'd do anything for money. He knew you'd gone to Athens, to the Lykeion, but when you put knowledge ahead of silver, that opened his eyes. 'Not many gentlemen would have done the same,' was how he put it.”

“Did he?” Sostratos said, and Lysistratos dipped his head. “That's . . . surprising,” Sostratos went on in musing tones. “What I was afraid of at the time was that he would call for half a dozen burly slaves and keep the gryphon's skull. I thought he was admiring that, not my integrity. You never can tell.”

“No, you never can,” Lysistratos agreed. “Would you want him in the family?”

“I've been thinking about that. Before what you said just now, I would have told you no,” Sostratos answered. “Now...” He shrugged and let out a rueful chuckle. “Now I'm so flattered, my advice probably isn't worth a thing.”

“Oh, I doubt that. If there's one thing I can rely on, son, it's that you keep your wits about you.”

“Thank you,” Sostratos said, though he wasn't quite sure his father had paid him a compliment. He might almost have said, Coldblooded, aren't you? Sostratos chuckled again. Compared to, say, his cousin, he was coldblooded, and he knew it. After some thought, he went on, “Do I want Damonax in the family? Erinna wants the match; I know that. It would be a step up for us, if he's not after our money to repair his fortunes. Actually, it would be a step up for us even if he is, but I don't think I care to take that kind of step.”

“I told you you keep your wits about you,” his father said. “I don't care to, either.”

“I didn't think you did, sir.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. “Damonax isn't bad-looking, he isn't stupid, and he isn't a churl. If he's not hiding something from us, Erinna could do worse.”

“Fair enough,” Lysistratos said. “I was thinking along the same lines. I'll keep talking with him, then. We have some haggling to do. He wants a big dowry—you already knew that, didn't you?”

Sostratos dipped his head. “He has some reason to ask it, because Erinna's a widow, not a maiden. But if he won't come down, if he cares more about the dowry than he does about her, that's a sign his own affairs aren't prospering.”

“Good point—very good,” Lysistratos said. “We'll take a few steps forward and we'll see, that's all.”

Menedemos spent as much time as he could away from the house. That kept him from quarreling with his father, and it kept him from having much to do with his father's wife. He exercised in the gymnasion. He strolled through the agora, looking at what was for sale there and talking with other men who came there to look and to talk. All sorts of things came to the marketplace at Rhodes. He kept hoping he would see another gryphon's skull. If he did, he intended to buy it for his cousin. He had no luck there, though.

And, when he wasn't at the gymnasion or the agora, he went down to the harbor. Not many ships came in much more than a month after the autumnal equinox, but the harbor stayed busy even so, with new vessels a-building and old ones—the Aphrodite among them— hauled up on the beach for repairs and refitting. The talk was good there, too, though different from that in the market square: centered on the sea, much less concerned over either the latest juicy gossip or the wider world.

“You're lucky you're here, and not in shackles in a slave market in Carthage or Phoenicia or Crete,” a carpenter said, driving home a large-headed copper tack that helped secure lead sheathing to a round ship's side.

“Believe me, Khremes, I know it,” Menedemos answered. “A pestilence take all pirates.” Everyone working on the merchantman dipped his head. In a savage mood, Menedemos went on, “And if the pestilence doesn't take 'em, the cross will do.”

“I'd like to see that myself,” Khremes said. “But those whoresons are hard to catch. Remind me—I heard your story, but this bit didn't stick—was it a pentekonter that came after you, or one of those gods-detested hemioliai?”

“A hemiolia,” Menedemos said. “To the crows with the whoreson who first thought up the breed. He must have been a pirate himself. I hope he ended up on a cross and died slow. They're only good for one thing—”

“Might as well be women,” Khremes broke in, and all the men in earshot laughed.

That hit closer to the center of the target than Menedemos would have liked. To keep anyone else from guessing, he took the gibe a step further with a bit of doggerel:

“Euge!” Khremes exclaimed, and put down his hammer to clap his hands. The other carpenters and the harborside loungers bending an ear dipped their heads.

“Thanks,” Menedemos said, thinking, I'll have to remember that one and spring it on Sostratos when he's got a mouthful of wine—see if I can make him choke. He made himself go back to hemioliai: “Cursed ships are only good for darting out to grab a merchantman—and for showing a pair of heels to anything honest that chases em.

“Sometimes a trireme'll catch 'em,” Khremes said, picking up the hammer once more and choosing another short copper tack.

“Sometimes,” Menedemos said morosely. “Not often enough, and we all know it.”

The Rhodians dipped their heads again. A lot of them had pulled an oar in one of the polis' triremes, or in one of the bigger, heavier warships that were fine for battling their own kind but too slow and beamy to go pirate-hunting despite their swarms of rowers.

Khremes started hammering away. A man who looked as if he had a hangover winced and drew back from the round ship. As the carpenter drove the tack home, he said, “Don't know what to do about it. Triremes are the fastest warships afloat, and they have been for—oh, I don't know, a mighty long time, anyways. Forever, you might almost say.”

Sostratos would know how long —probably to the hour, Menedemos thought. He didn't himself, not exactly, but he had some notion of how things worked. He said, “Biremes are faster than pentekonters because they can pack just as many rowers into a shorter, lighter hull. Hemioliai are especially little and light—the back half of that upper bank of oars only gets used part-time.”

“Triremes are a lot bigger'n two-bankers,” one of the loungers said.

Menedemos dipped his head. “Truth. But they pack in a lot more rowers, too, so they go just about as fast, and the extra weight makes 'em hit a lot harder when they ram. What we could really use is a trireme built fast and light like a hemiolia, maybe with the same way to stow mast and yard where the back half of the thranite bank of oarsmen work.”

He'd been talking to hear himself talk. He hadn't expected anything particularly interesting or clever to come out. But Khremes slowly put down the hammer and gave him a long, thoughtful look. “By the gods, best one, I think you may have thrown a triple six there,” he said.

Menedemos listened in his own mind to what he'd just said. He let out a soft whistle. “If we wanted to, we really could build ships like that, couldn't we?” he said.

“We could. No doubt about it—we could. And I think maybe we should,” Khremes said. “They'd be quick as boiled asparagus, they would. And they'd have enough size and enough crew to step on a hemiolia like it was a bug.”

“One of them would be a hemiolia, near enough,” Menedemos said. “An oversized hemiolia, a hemiolia made from a trireme's hull. You could call it a ...” He groped for a word. He didn't think the one he came up with really existed in the Greek language, but it suited the idea, so he used it anyway: “A trihemiolia, you might say.”

Whether that was a word or not, it got across what he wanted, for Khremes dipped his head. Excitement in his voice, the carpenter said, “When I close my eyes, I can see her on the water. She'd be wicked fast—fast as a dolphin, fast as a falcon. A trihemiolia.” It came off his tongue more readily than it had from Menedemos'. “You ought to talk to the admirals, sir, Furies take me if I'm lying. A flotilla of ships like that could make a big pack o' pirates sorry they took up their trade.”

“Do you think so?” Menedemos asked. But he could see a tri-hemiolia in his mind's eye, too, see it gliding over the Aegean, swift and deadly as a barracuda.

Khremes pointed north and west, toward the military harbor. “If you don't find one of the admirals at the ship sheds, I'd be mighty surprised. And, by the gods, I think this is something they need to hear.”

“Come with me, will you?” Menedemos said, suddenly and uncharacteristically modest. “After all, you're one of the men who'd have to build a trihemiolia, if there were to be such a thing.”

The carpenter stuck the hammer on his belt, carrying it where a soldier would have worn a sword. “Let's go.”

Ship sheds lined the military harbor: big, wide ones that held the fives Rhodes used to defend herself against other naval craft; smaller ones for the triremes that hunted pirates. When not on patrol or on campaign, war galleys were hauled up out of the water so their hulls stayed dry and light and swift.

A few guards tramped back and forth by the ship sheds. When Menedemos and Khremes came up to one of them and asked their question, the fellow dipped his head, which made the crimson-dyed horsehair plume on his helmet nod and sway. He pointed with his spear. “Yes, as a matter of fact, Admiral Eudemos just went into that shed there. The Freedom's been having trouble with her sternpost, and he wants to make sure they got it fixed.”

When Menedemos walked into the shed that housed the five, his eyes needed a few heartbeats to adjust to the gloom. He heard Eudemos before spotting him up on the deck of the war galley: “You really think she's sound this time?” he was asking a carpenter.

“Yes, sir, I do,” the man answered.

“All right. She'd better be,” Eudemos said. “Nothing much wrong with having trouble—that's going to happen. But taking three tries to fix it? That's a shame and a disgrace.” He noticed Menedemos and Khremes at the mouth of the shed and raised his voice to call out to them: “Hail, the two of you. What do you need?”

For a moment, Menedemos didn't know what to say. Come on, fool, he told himself. You've got something to sell, same as you would in the agora. That steadied him. “Sir, I've had an idea that might interest you,” he said.

“It's a good one, Admiral,” Khremes added.

“That you, Khremes?” Eudemos said. He might not have recognized Menedemos' voice, but he knew the carpenter's at once. “You've got pretty good sense. If you say it's worth listening to, I'll hear it.”

He came down the Freedom's steeply sloping gangplank and hurried toward Menedemos and Khremes. Menedemos got the notion he did everything in a hurry. He was somewhere in his forties, with a graying beard, a jutting nose, and hard, watchful eyes. “Ah, Philodemos' son,” he said to himself, placing Menedemos. “All right— you know a little something about ships, anyway. Say on.”

Menedemos did, finishing, “Too many pirates get away. If we had some ships like these, maybe some of them wouldn't. That's what I'm hoping for.” He waited to see how Eudemos would take the idea.

The admiral had heard him out without giving any sign of what was in his mind. Once Menedemos finished, Eudemos said not a word to him, instead turning to Khremes and asking, “Can we build such ships?”

“Yes, sir,” the carpenter answered. “Yes, sir, without a doubt we can. They might even be cheaper than ordinary triremes. You'd want 'em light—you wouldn't close in the whole deck or build on an oarbox of solid planks, so you'd save timber.”

That got Eudemos' attention. “I—see,” he said, and turned back to Menedemos. “You've given me something new to think about, and that doesn't happen every day. A whole new class of warship . . . Euge!”

“I was just passing the time of day with Khremes when I said something that struck both of us,” Menedemos said. “That was when we came looking for you.”

Eudemos briskly dipped his head. “Having a good idea is one thing. Knowing you've had a good idea is something else again. People have lots of good ideas when they're just passing the time of day. Usually, they keep right on talking and forget all about them. You didn't. A trihemiolia, eh?” He tried the unfamiliar word, then dipped his head again. “A lot of pirates may be sorry you didn't, too.”

“By the gods, I hope so,” Menedemos growled.

“Yes, you're another one who got attacked, aren't you?” the admiral said.

“I certainly am, sir.”

“Well, as I say, the pirates who struck you and a lot of their mates may be sorry they did it. That may prove one of the most important bits of piracy since Paris stole Helen, but not the way the pirates had in mind.” Eudemos sounded as if he thought it was.

Sostratos thought it was one of the most important bits of piracy of all time, too, on account of that polluted gryphon's skull, Menedemos thought. But then, the admiral has to think straighter than my cousin.

“Do you read and write?” Eudemos asked Khremes.

“Some, sir. Nothing fancy,” the carpenter answered.

“This doesn't need to be fancy,” Eudemos said. “Write me up a list of what all would go into making a trihemiolia, as best you can figure. Base it on what goes into a trireme, of course.”

“I'll do it,” Khremes said.

“Good.” Eudemos clasped Menedemos' hand. “And good for you, too. You've earned the thanks of your polis.”

Menedemos bowed low. Those were words that struck home. “What Hellene could hope for more, most noble one?”

“A trihemiolia, eh?” Sostratos said as he and Menedemos made their way through the streets by the great harbor toward Himilkon the Phoenician's workhouse.

“That's right,” his cousin answered. “Like I was saying, the gods might have put the word on my tongue day before yesterday.”

“If the gods gave you the word, why didn't they give you one that was easier to pronounce?” Sostratos asked. “A 'three-one-and-a-halfer'? People will be trying to figure out what that is for years.”

“Admiral Eudemos didn't have any trouble,” Menedemos said.

“He's an admiral,” Sostratos retorted. “He worries about the thing itself, not about the word.”

“Do you know what you remind me of?” Menedemos said. “You remind me of Aiskhylos down in Hades' house in Aristophanes' Frogs, where he's criticizing Euripides' prologues. But I don't think the trihemiolia is going to 'lose its little bottle of oil,' the way the prologues kept doing.”

“Well, all right,” Sostratos said. “I'd be the first to admit Eudemos knows more about such things than I do.”

“Generous of you,” Menedemos remarked.

Sostratos wagged a finger at him. “You shouldn't be sarcastic, my dear. You don't do it well, and that's something I do know something about.” Menedemos made a face at him. Sostratos laughed.

Hyssaldomos, Himilkon's Karian slave, was puttering around by the ramshackle warehouse, looking busy while actually doing nothing in particular. Sostratos snorted. Every slave in the world learned that art. Seeing the two Rhodians approach gave Hyssaldomos a legitimate excuse for doing something that didn't involve much real work: he waved to them and called, “Hail, both of you! You looking for my boss?”

“That's right,” Sostratos answered. “Is he there?”

“You bet he is,” the slave said. “I'll go fetch him. I know he'll be glad to see you.” He ducked inside.

“Of course he will,” Sostratos muttered. “After we bought the peafowl from him, he's got to be sure he can sell us anything.”

“We made money from them,” Menedemos said.

“By the time we got rid of them, I'd sooner have served them up roasted at a symposion,” Sostratos said. Familiarity had bred contempt; he was, and would remain, a hater of peafowl.

Before Menedemos could answer, Himilkon emerged from the warehouse, Hyssaldomos behind him. The Phoenician wore an ankle-length wool robe not badly suited to the raw autumn day. Gold hoops glittered in his ears; a black, bushy beard tumbled halfway down his chest. He bowed himself almost double. “Hail, my masters,” he said in gutturally accented but fluent Greek. “How may I serve you today?”

Sostratos found the Phoenician's oily politeness excessive. As far as he was concerned, no free man should call another one master. “Hail,” he answered, doing his best to hide his distaste. “We'd like to talk with you about your homeland, if you don't mind.”

Himilkon's bushy eyebrows leaped upward. “About Byblos?” he said. “Of course, my friend. To you I shall gladly reveal the secrets of my heart.” He bowed again. Sostratos didn't believe him for a moment. On the other hand, he didn't think Himilkon had expected to be believed.

“Not just about Byblos,” Menedemos said. “About Phoenicia in general, and the countries thereabouts, and the kinds of goods we might expect to find in them.”

“Ah.” Intelligence glittered in Himilkon's black, black eyes. “You think to sail east next spring?”

“We've talked about it,” Sostratos said. “If we do, we'd like to learn as much as we can beforehand.”

“Wise. Very wise.” Himilkon gave him yet another bow. “Most Hellenes, if you will forgive my saying so, charge ahead first and think of questions afterwards—if they ever do. I might have known you would be different.” One more bow.

“Er—thank you.” Sostratos wondered if that was a real compliment aimed at him or just more Phoenician flattery. He couldn't tell.

Himilkon rounded on his slave. “Don't stand there with your ears flapping in the breeze, you lazy, worthless, good-for-nothing rogue. Go inside and fetch us some wine and a bite to eat, and don't take all day doing it, either.”

“Right, boss.” If his master's outburst frightened Hyssaldomos, the Karian hid it very well. He sauntered into the warehouse.

“I ought to give him a good whipping—find out if he's really alive,” Himilkon grumbled. “What do you have in mind buying, my masters, and what will you take east to sell?”

“Well, obviously, as long as we're in the country, we'll look to buy some of the crimson dye they make in the Phoenician towns,” Menedemos said.

Himilkon nodded. He'd lived in Rhodes a long time, but still didn't usually show agreement as a Hellene would. “Yes, of course,” he said. “You already know something of the qualities to look for there, for it comes west often enough. What else?”

“Balsam,” Sostratos answered. “We bought some in Knidos from a couple of Phoenician traders, and we did well with it—better than I thought we would. If we could get it straight from the source, we'd make even more.”

Before Himilkon could reply, his slave came out with wine and cups and some barley rolls and a bowl of olive oil on a wooden tray.

“Just set it down and go away,” Himilkon told him. “I don't want you snooping around.”

“Wait,” Sostratos said. “Could we have some water first, to mix with the wine?”

“Go on. Fetch it,” Himilkon told Hyssaldomos. But the Phoenician also let out a mournful cluck. “Why you Hellenes water your wine, I've never understood. It takes away half the pleasure. Would you wrap a rag around your prong before you go into a woman?”

“One of the Seven Sages said, 'Nothing too much,' “ Sostratos told him. “To us, unwatered wine seems too much, too likely to bring on drunkenness and madness.”

Himilkon's broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “To me, this is silly, but never mind.” He drank his wine neat, and with every sign of enjoyment. Smacking his lips, he went on, “You spoke of balsam, my master.”

Sostratos had been chewing on a roll, and answered with his mouth full: “Yes. Certainly.”

“You want the best, the balsam of Engedi?” Himilkon asked. Sostratos and Menedemos both dipped their heads. Himilkon said, “You won't get it straight from the source, not in Phoenicia you won't. Engedi lies inland, perhaps twelve or fifteen parasangs inland—you would say, let me see, about, oh, three hundred stadia.”

“Isn't that Phoenicia, too?” Menedemos asked.

“No, no, no.” Himilkon shook his head. “The Phoenician cities are along the coast. Inland, down there, is the country of the Ioudaioi. And the Ioudaioi, my friends, are very peculiar people.”

Menedemos sent Sostratos a quick glance, as if to say anyone not a Hellene was of course a peculiar person. Sostratos would not have disagreed, but didn't care to say any such thing where Himilkon could hear. What he did say was, “I don't know much about these Ioudaioi, O best one. Tell me more.”

“Foolish people. Stubborn people. About what you'd expect from ignorant, back-country hillmen.” Himilkon sniffed and poured himself more wine, then shook his head. “And they're slightly daft— more than slightly daft—about their religion. You need to know that if you decide to go inland.”

“Daft how?” Sostratos asked. “If I go into their country, will they want me to worship the way they do?”

“No, no, no,” the Phoenician said again. He laughed. “But they may not want to have anything to do with you, because you don't worship the way they do. Dealing with you might cause them ritual pollution, you see. They're very prickly about that sort of thing.”

“They sound as bad as Egyptians,” Menedemos said.

“They're even worse,” Himilkon said. “They worship their own god, and they say nobody else's gods are real.”

“What? Zeus isn't real?” Menedemos burst out laughing. “Oh, my dear fellow, that has to be a joke.”

“Not to the Ioudaioi,” Himilkon said. “Not at all.”

“That holds an obvious logical flaw,” Sostratos said. “If theirs is the only true god, why is he worshiped by one little tribe nobody ever heard of, and by nobody else in the whole wide world?”

Himilkon shrugged once more. Menedemos said, “Well, my dear, if you deal with these strange people, I suggest you don't ask them that question. Otherwise, you won't be dealing with them long. If they're like Egyptians, they'll be touchy as all get-out about religion, and they won't care a fig for logic.”

However much Sostratos might wish it didn't, that made good sense. “I'll remember,” he promised, and turned back to Himilkon. “What else can you tell me about these Ioudaioi?”

“They are honest—I will say that for them,” the Phoenician answered. “This god of theirs may seem silly to everyone else, but they take him very seriously.”

“What does he look like?” Sostratos asked. “Do they turn a crocodile or a baboon or a cat or a jackal into a god, the way the Egyptians do?”

“No, my master—nothing of the sort, in fact.” Himilkon shook his head again. “If you can believe it, he doesn't look like anything at all. He just is—is everywhere at the same time, I suppose that means.” He laughed at the absurdity of it.

So did Menedemos, whose ideas about religion had always been conventional. But Sostratos thoughtfully pursed his lips. Ever since Sokrates' day, philosophers had been dissatisfied with the gods as they appeared in the Iliad: lustful, quarrelsome, often foolish or cowardly—a pack of chieftains writ large. One cautious step at a time, thinkers had groped their way toward something that sounded a lot like what these Ioudaioi already had. Maybe they weren't so silly after all.

How can I find out? he wondered, and asked Himilkon, “Do any of them speak Greek?”

“A few may.” But Himilkon looked doubtful. “You'd do better to learn a little Aramaic, though. I could teach you myself, if you like. I wouldn't charge much.”

Now Sostratos wore a dubious expression. His curiosity had never extended to learning foreign languages. “Maybe,” he said.

“I know how it is with you Hellenes,” Himilkon said. “You always want everybody else to speak your tongue. You never care to pick up anybody else's. That's fine in Hellas, my friend, but there's more to the world than Hellas. Your other choice would be to hire a Greek-speaking interpreter in one of the Phoenician towns, but that would cost a lot more than learning yourself.”

Mentioning expense was a good way to get Sostratos to think about acquiring some Aramaic on his own. “Maybe,” he said again, in a different tone of voice.

Himilkon bowed once more. “You know I am at your service, my master.”

After the Rhodians left the warehouse, Menedemos asked, “Do you really want to learn to go barbarbar?”

Sostratos tossed his head. “No, not even a little bit. But I don't want to have to count on an interpreter, either.” He sighed. “We'll see.”

Menedemos felt trapped in the andron. For once, that had nothing to do with Baukis. She was upstairs, in the women's quarters. But Philodemos' friend Xanthos shared with Medusa the ability to turn anyone close by to stone: he was petrifyingly boring. “My grandson is beginning to learn his alpha-beta,” he said now. “He's a likely little lad—looks like my wife's mother. My father-in-law liked string beans more than any man I've ever known, except maybe my great uncle. 'Give me a mess of beans and I'll be happy,' my great uncle would say. He lived to be almost eighty, though he was all blind and bent toward the end.”

“Isn't that interesting?” Menedemos lied.

He glanced over toward his father, hoping the older man would rescue both of them from their predicament. Xanthos was his friend, after all. But Philodemos just pointed to the krater in which the watered wine waited and said, “Would you like some more, best one?”

“I don't mind if I do.” Xanthos used the dipper to refill his cup. Oh, no, Menedemos thought. That will only make him talk more.

Of course, by everything he'd ever seen, Xanthos needed no help in talking as much as any three ordinary men put together. After a couple of sips of wine, he turned to Philodemos and said, “Were you in the Assembly when I spoke on the need to keep good relations with Antigonos and Ptolemaios both—and with Lysimakhos and Kassandros, too, for that matter?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was,” Philodemos said quickly. Menedemos' father, a man of stern rectitude, seldom told lies, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he didn't hesitate here.

That did him little good. “I believe your son was still at sea, though,” Xanthos said. “I'm sure he'd be interested in hearing my remarks.”

Menedemos had no idea why he was sure of any such thing. Philodemos said, “My son's met Ptolemaios. You might be interested in hearing his views.”

He might as well have saved his breath; Xanthos was interested in no one's views but his own. He took a deep breath, getting ready to launch into his speech. Menedemos tried a different tack: “What about Seleukos, O marvelous one? You say we should stay friendly toward all the other Macedonian marshals”—which struck him as much easier to advocate than to do—”but what about Seleukos, out in the east?”

“A very good question, young man, and you may be sure I'll address it in great detail when next the Assembly convenes,” Xanthos said. “Meanwhile—”

Out came the speech. Resistance was futile; it only delayed the inevitable. A man can close his eyes, Menedemos thought. Why can't he close his ears, too? Being unable to do so struck him as most unfair, and ever more so as time dragged on.

The worst part was, Xanthos expected praise once he finished. He always did, and pouted when he didn't get it. “That was . . . quite something, sir,” Menedemos managed, which saved him the trouble of saying just what.

“Yes, well, I have some rather urgent business to attend to,” Philodemos said. For a bad moment, Menedemos feared his father would go off and leave him alone with Xanthos. He'd known he annoyed his father, but hadn't thought Philodemos hated him that much. But then Philodemos added, “And I need my boy with me.”

Xanthos had trouble taking a hint. After another quarter-hour of platitudes, though, he did make his farewells. “Oh, by the dog of Egypt!” Menedemos exclaimed. “Doesn't he ever shut up?”

“When he goes to bed, perhaps,” his father said.

“I'll bet he talks in his sleep,” Menedemos said savagely. “It'd be just like him.”

Philodemos clucked in mild reproof: “That's not a kind thing to say.” He paused, then sighed. “I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you, but it's not kind.”

“Too bad.” Menedemos stood up and stretched. Something in his back crackled. He sighed, too, with relief. “The saddest part is, he's got no idea how dull he is.”

“No, and don't tell him,” his father said. “He has a good heart. He's just boring. He can't help that, any more than a man can help having a taste for cabbage stew. I don't want him insulted, do you hear me?”

“I won't be the one to do it,” Menedemos said with another sigh.

“You'd better not.” But Philodemos sighed again, too. “He's dreadfully dull, isn't he?”

Baukis walked purposefully across the courtyard—now that Xanthos was gone, she could come forth from the women's quarters. Menedemos followed her with his eyes, but didn't turn his head. He wanted to give his father no reason for suspicion, especially when he was doing his best not to deserve any. But he couldn't help noting that she disappeared into the kitchen. Uh-oh, he thought.

Sure enough, a moment later her voice and Sikon's rose in passionate argument. “There they go again,” Menedemos said—that seemed a safe enough remark.

“So they do.” His father dipped out a fresh cup of watered wine, which seemed to express his view of the situation.

“You really ought to do something about that,” Menedemos said.

“And what do you suggest?” his father retorted. “A wife is supposed to manage the household, and a cook is supposed to come up with the best suppers he can, and to the crows with money. If I side with either one of them, the other will think I'm wrong, and that will just cause more trouble. No, I'll stay off to the side. Let them settle it between themselves.”

That made good sense. Menedemos wasn't altogether happy about admitting as much to himself. He wondered why his father couldn't give him as long a leash as he let his wife and the cook have. Whenever he thinks I'm the least little bit out of line, he slaps me down hard, he thought resentfully.

In the kitchen, the yelling got louder. “—think you're King Midas, with all the gold in the world around you!” Baukis said.

Sikon's reply came to Menedemos' ears in impassioned fragments: “... cheapskate . . . barley mush . . . salted fish!” The cook slammed his fist down on a counter. Baukis let out a rage-filled, wordless squeal.

“Oh, dear,” Menedemos said. Philodemos drained that cup of wine and got himself another. He was starting to look a little bleary, which he seldom did in the afternoon. First Xanthos and now this, Menedemos thought, not without sympathy.

A moment later, Baukis stormed back across the courtyard, her back stiff with fury. She went up the stairs. The door to the women's quarters slammed. This time, Philodemos was the one who said, “Oh, dear.”

And, a moment after that, Sikon rushed into the andron shouting, “I can't stand it any more! Tell that woman to keep her nose out of my kitchen from here on out, or I quit!”

“That woman happens to be my wife,” Philodemos pointed out.

“And you can't quit,” Menedemos added. “You're a slave, in case you've forgotten.”

By Sikon's comically astonished expression, he had forgotten. With reason, too: in the kitchen, a good cook was king. And Sikon was more than a merely good cook. He said, “The way she goes on, you'd think we were trying to scrape by on five oboloi a day. How am I supposed to do anything interesting if I'm looking over my shoulder all the time for fear I spend a khalkos too much?”

“You've managed so far,” Philodemos said. “I'm sure you can keep right on doing it. Naturally, my wife worries about expenses. That's what wives do. You'll find a way to go on making your delicious suppers, come what may. That's what cooks do.”

No, he never took so soft a line with me, Menedemos thought. Maybe I should have been a cook, not a trader.

But Sikon wasn't satisfied, either. “Cooks cook, that's what they do. How can I cook when she's driving me mad?” He threw his hands in the air and stomped out of the andron. When he got back to the kitchen, he showed what he thought of the whole business by slamming the door as hard as Baukis had upstairs.

“Well, well,” Philodemos said, a phrase Menedemos had been known to use himself. Philodemos pointed to him. “You're closer to the krater than I am, son. Is there enough wine left for another cup?”

“Let me look.” Menedemos did, and then reached for the dipper. “As a matter of fact, there's enough left for two.” He filled one for his father, one for himself.

“That man is so difficult,” Baukis told him a couple of days later. “He simply will not see reason. Maybe we just ought to sell him and try someone else.”

Menedemos tossed his head. “We can't do that. People would talk—he's been in the family his whole life. And he's a very good cook, you know. I wouldn't want to lose him, and neither would my father.”

Baukis made a sour face. “Yes, I've seen as much. Otherwise, he would have laid down the law to Sikon.” She threw her hands in the air. “What am I supposed to do? I'm not going to give up, but how can I make a proper fight of it? Maybe you have the answer, Menedemos.” She looked toward him, her eyes wide and hopeful.

Why did she appeal to him against his father, her husband? Because she was looking for a weapon to use against Philodemos and Sikon? Or simply because the two of them weren't so far apart in years, and Philodemos' beard was gray? Whatever the reason, Menedemos knew she was giving him his chance. He'd made the most of far less with plenty of other women. Why not here, with Baukis?

It would be easy, he thought. He bit down on the inside of his lower lip till he tasted blood. “I don't know,” he said woodenly. “I just don't know.”

And then, to his horrified dismay, his father's wife hung her head and quietly began to cry. In a small, broken voice, she said, “Maybe he's angry with me because I haven't got pregnant yet. I've done everything I know how to do—I've prayed, I've sacrificed—but I haven't caught. Maybe that's it.”

My father is an old man. His seed is bound to be cold. If I sow my seed in the furrow he's plowed, it would almost be doing him a favor. Menedemos sprang to his feet from the bench in the courtyard, so abruptly that Baukis blinked in surprise. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled. “I've just remembered—I've got an appointment down by the harbor. I'm late. I'm very late.”

The lie was clumsy. Baukis had to know it was a lie. Menedemos fled the house anyway, fled as if the Kindly Ones dogged his heels. And so they might, he thought as he looked around on the street, wondering where he would really go. If I stayed on the road I was traveling there, so they might.

He squeezed his hands into fists till his nails bit into his callused palms. Did Baukis know, did she have any idea, of the turmoil she roused in him? She'd never given any sign of it—but then, if she was a good wife, she wouldn't. Not all the seductions Menedemos tried succeeded.

He laughed, a harsh, bitter noise having nothing to do with mirth. This is a seduction I haven't tried, curse it. This is a seduction I'm not going to try. Baukis trusted him. By all the signs, she liked him. But she was his father's wife. “I can't,” he said, as if he were choking. “I can't. And I won't.”

All at once, he knew where he would go to keep his “appointment.” The closest brothel was only a couple of blocks away. That wasn't what he wanted, but maybe it would keep him from thinking about what he did want and—he told himself yet again—what he couldn't have.

Sostratos gaped at Himilkon. “What?” he said. “The conjugation of a verb in Aramaic changes, depending on whether the subject is masculine or feminine? That's crazy!”

The Phoenician shook his head. “No, best one. It's only different.” “Everything's different,” Sostratos said. “None of the words is anything like Greek. You have all these choking noises in your language.”

“I have learned Greek,” Himilkon said. “That was as hard for me as this is for you.”

He was bound to be right. That made Sostratos feel no better. “And did you tell me your alpha-beta has no vowels, and you write it from right to left?” Himilkon nodded. Sostratos groaned. “That's . . . very strange, too,” he said.

“We like our aleph-bet as well as you like yours,” Himilkon told him. The Phoenician scratched his head. “Interesting how some of the letters have names that are almost the same.”

“It's no accident,” Sostratos answered. “We Hellenes learned the art of writing from the Phoenicians who came with King Kadmos. We changed the letters to suit our language better, but we learned them from your folk. That's what Herodotos says, anyhow.”

“If you changed them, you should not blame us for leaving them the way they were,” Himilkon said. “Shall we go on with the lesson now? You are doing pretty well, you really are.”

“You're only saying that to keep me coming back.” Sostratos didn't think he was doing well at all. Aramaic seemed harder than anything he'd tried to learn at the Lykeion.

But Himilkon said, “No, you have a good memory—I already knew that—and your ear is not bad. Anyone who hears you speak will know you for a Hellene (or at least for a foreigner, for in some of these little places they will never have heard of Hellenes), but people will be able to understand you.”

“Will I be able to understand them, though?” Sostratos said. “Following you is even harder than speaking, I think.”

“Do the best you can. When spring comes and you sail east, you may decide you want an interpreter after all. But even if you do, you are better off knowing some of the language. That will help keep him from cheating you.”

“True. Very sensible, too.” Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if trying to knock in some wisdom. “Yes, let's get on with it.”

His brain felt distinctly overloaded as he walked back up toward the northern tip of the city and his home. He was going over feminine conjugations in his mind, and so engrossed in them that he didn't notice when someone called his name.

“Sostratos!”

The second—or was it the third?—time, that pierced his shield of concentration. He looked up. “Oh. Hail, Damonax. Where did you spring from?”

Damonax laughed. “Spring from? What, do you think Kadmos sowed a dragon's tooth and reaped me? Not likely, my dear. I've been walking up the street beside you for half a plethron, but you never knew it.”

Sostratos' cheeks heated. “Oh, dear. I'm afraid I didn't. I'm sorry. I was . . . thinking about something.”

“You must have been, by Zeus,” Damonax said. “Well, Sokrates was the same way if Platon's telling the truth, so you're in good company.”

Sokrates, Sostratos was sure, had never pondered the vagaries of Aramaic grammar. “I was talking about Kadmos just a little while ago,” he said, “though not in connection with the dragon's teeth.”

“What then?” Damonax asked. “How Euripides shows him in the Bakkhai?”

“No.” Sostratos tossed his head. “In aid of the Phoenicians' bringing their letters to Hellas.”

“Oh. That.” Damonax shrugged. “History interests me less than philosophy. Did I hear rightly that your splendid gryphon's skull was lost at sea?”

“I'm afraid you did,” Sostratos replied. “What are you doing in this part of the city?”

“Why, coming to see your father, of course. He must have told you I'd like to marry your sister,” Damonax said.

“Yes, he did. The news surprised me more than a little. We aren't a family with land out to the horizon.” And you come from that kind of family—or you did, Sostratos thought. Have you squandered everything? Is that it?

Damonax's smile, bright and bland, told him nothing. “Of course I expect she'd bring a suitable dowry with her,” he said, “but that would be true of any man seeking her hand, is it not so?”

It was so, and Sostratos knew it perfectly well. He did say, “What one side finds a suitable dowry may seem outrageous to the other.”

Damonax surprised him by saying, “Oh, I hope not, not here. I knew your sister's first husband—we weren't close, but he was good friends with my older brother, who was nearer his age. He would sing Erinna's praises by the hour, in the areas where a wife should be praised: her spinning, her weaving, the way she ran the household. So I already have some notion of what I'd be getting, you might say, and I'm looking forward to it.”

“Really?” Sostratos said. Maybe that explained why he was paying court to a widow and not to a maiden. Maybe. Sostratos still had his suspicions. He knocked on the door. When Gyges opened it, he told the Lydian majordomo, “Here's Damonax, whom I ran into on the street. He's come to talk with Father.”

“Yes, of course, sir—we're expecting him.” The house slave turned to Damonax and gave him a polite little bow. “Hail, most noble one.”

“Hail,” Damonax answered. “Is Lysistratos in the andron?”

“That's right,” Gyges said. “Just come with me. I'll take you there.” He glanced toward Sostratos. “You may find this interesting yourself.”

“So I may,” Sostratos said. “One of these days, I may have a daughter myself. I'd like to see how the dicker goes.”

“You've already missed a good deal,” Damonax said.

“That's all right. I expect you and Father will start raking things up again.”

The older man chuckled. “You're probably right.”

In the andron, Lysistratos waited till a slave had served out wine and olives and cheese before getting down to business. Sostratos' father said, “So Damonax, you don't think a dowry of two talents of silver is enough?”

“No, sir,” Damonax answered with polite firmness. “Neither do my kinsfolk.”

Lysistratos sighed. “I'm sorry to hear that, best one. Don't you think two talents would help you redeem some of your olive crop?”

Damonax flinched. “Redeem it? From whom?” Sostratos asked.

“From creditors, I'm afraid,” his father answered. “Damonax's family sank a lot of silver into part of a cargo on a round ship—and the ship either met pirates or it sank, because it never got to Alexandria. The year's olive crop is collateral.”

“How did you find that out?” Damonax demanded. “Our creditors swore they wouldn't blab.”

“They didn't,” Lysistratos said. “That's why I needed so long to figure this out. But I'm not wrong, am I, even if I pieced things together from hither and yon?”

“No, you're not wrong,” Damonax said bitterly. “It's a pity, though—the match would have been a good one.”

Sostratos got to his feet. “Father, walk out into the courtyard with me for a moment, would you?” he said.

Looking a little surprised, Lysistratos followed him out of the andron. In a low voice, he asked, “Well? What would you say to me that you don't care to have Damonax hear?”

“Only that he would be a good match for Erinna, if he'll settle for the dowry we want,” Sostratos answered. “I do think he wants her for herself as well as for the money; he told me how her first husband praised her as a housekeeper to him. And Erinna does want to marry again, and we saw matches for her aren't so easy to come by when that other family chose a younger girl in her place.”

His father looked thoughtful. “Something to that,” he admitted. “And Damonax would be beholden to us for going forward, and his family's fortunes may recover.” He sighed. “You're right about your sister—she does want children of her own. A father's not supposed to put much weight on such things, but how can I help it?” He dipped his head in sudden decision. “If he agrees to the dowry, I'll make the match.”

When Sostratos and Lysistratos came back into the andron, Damonax rose. “I'll be going,” he said. “Not much point to any more talk, is there?” Pained resignation had replaced bitterness.

“That depends,” Lysistratos said. “You're not going to squeeze more than two talents' worth of dowry out of me, but we'll go on from there if you can live with that.”

Damonax sank back onto his stool as if his legs didn't want to support him. “You would do that?” he whispered.

“Hard to blame a man too much for wanting to keep his family's money problems to himself,” Sostratos said. Not all Hellenes would have agreed with him, but he was an intensely private man himself, and understood the urge to put such embarrassments in chests, as it were, and hope no one else found out about them.

His father said, “Tell me one thing very plainly, Damonax: you've lost your crop for the year, is it not so, but not the land itself?”

“Yes.” Jerkily, Damonax dipped his head. “Yes, that is so. I swear it by Zeus and all the other gods.”

“All right, then,” Lysistratos said. “You people can recover from that, and even if two talents is less than you would have wanted, it will go a long way toward keeping you and your family afloat.”

“Thank you, sir,” Damonax said. “I am in your debt—we're all in your debt.” Sostratos smiled to himself. That was what he'd had in mind. Gratitude and a sense of obligation didn't always last, of course, but sometimes they did. Damonax went on, “The marriage will give you legitimate grandchildren, sir.”

“That's the point of marriage, after all,” Sostratos' father said. “Now go on home. Make sure your kin are satisfied, and we'll take it from there.”

After Damonax had left, Erinna came down from the women's quarters. When Sostratos told her of the agreement, she whooped with delight and threw herself into his arms. “This is wonderful!” she said. “It's like a second chance. It is a second chance.”

“May everything go as well as it possibly can, my dear,” Sostratos said. “Gods grant it be so.”

“Gods grant it indeed,” Lysistratos said. He eyed Sostratos. “One day before too long, son, we'll find you a match, too. Thirty's a good age for a man to wed, and you're getting there.”

“Me?” Sostratos hadn't thought about it much. Marriage seemed neither real nor important to him. He patted his sister on the shoulder. She wanted a home to manage, but every port on the Inner Sea was his. The gods made me a man, not a woman; a Hellene, not a barbarian, he thought. Truly, I'm the lucky one.